


We All Are (Alphas, that is)

by DiefaceJohnson



Category: Alphas, Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: AU, And fluff and angst will make appearances, F/M, Hicks is Stiles, I'll just stop now, M/M, Manpain, Manpain galore, On hiatus indefinately, Post-Season 2, The buzz cuts made me do it
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-11-03
Updated: 2012-12-08
Packaged: 2017-11-17 16:17:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/553489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DiefaceJohnson/pseuds/DiefaceJohnson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hicks was having a normal day at the office. Everything was great, until some old friends showed up and started calling him by a name he hadn't heard in years...Stiles.</p><p>  <i> Derek turned his head toward the voice, somehow expecting to see a 17 year old Stiles standing there just as familiar as the day he'd left. He did not expect to turn just in time to receive a very hard punch in the face.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Collision

It was a good day at the office.

Hicks, Bill, and Kat had just spent the previous night raiding a warehouse known to belong to Stanton Parish, and they came back to the office with a veritable parade of villainous Alphas in cuffs behind them. The three of them stood aside to watch John and his team march the prisoners off to holding and interrogation, hands on hips and satisfied grins on their faces.

"Oh don't look so pleased with yourselves," Rachel teased, walking over to the group with a file folder in her hand. Bill looked overly hurt. "You don't think we did a good job, Rache?" he asked.

"Come off it, Bill. I know you guys are awesome and all, but is it really necessary to march in, in slow motion, with your bulletproof vests and your cool shades, then stop to pose like Horatio Caine in the middle of the office?"

"Seems pretty necessary to me," Hicks said. "How 'bout you, Kat?"

"Yep, downright essential," the short blonde agreed. Rachel scoffed lightly at their silliness before leaving the group to go find John and make kissy-faces or something. "We love you, Rache!" Hicks called after her prim form. She ignored him.

He turned to Bill, raising his hand to receive a high-five. "We kicked ass, I think we deserve a bamf moment." He then turned to Kat and got a low-five. Bill set a hand down heavily on Hicks's shoulder causing him to turn back to the bigger man. His face said it all. "But now it's time for paperwork," they said simultaneously. Bill patted his shoulder a couple more times sympathetically before turning to go to his office. Hicks hung his head and followed suit.

* * *

 Hicks launched a sharpened pencil at the doorknob of his office, sending it ricocheting vertically to lodge into the ceiling beside it seven predecessors. He'd just lined up his next shot when Nina suddenly stepped into the doorway. Hicks temporarily flailed, admonishing "I could've just stabbed you with a pencil, Nina, geez! You could have gotten lead poisining!"

Nina just chuckled, leaning back against the door. "I trust you," she said. "Also, there isn't actually lead in the lead of a pencil...It's just graphite--"

"Yeah, yeah," Hicks cut her off. "Either way, could you just warn a guy before you just walk in next time?"

"I didn't think I'd have to 'warn a guy' who was _supposedly_ just doing his paperwork. Projectile utensils don't usually take part in office duties."

"Come on, Nina. You know I can never focus on the stupid paperwo--" Hicks was interrupted by the sound of Gary's voice, high in anxiety, yelling "Hey, don't touch me! Pushing is rude, and-and I have a badge! I have a badge, you have to respect the badge!"

He was up and out of the room, trying to hear where Gary's shouts were coming from in a matter of seconds. Nina exited his office with him at the same time Rachel and Bill, with Kat, emerged from their doorways. They all looked as confused and angry as Hicks did. Rachel paused to listen, a far off look on her face, before saying "Six heartbeats, one of them Gary's. By the elevators."

Bill and Hicks were running as soon as the sentence left her lips, and Hicks knew the girls were close behind them. Hicks heard Gary's continued struggling as he rounded the corner to the short hallway leading to the elevators. Seconds later he emerged into the open area and froze when he saw Gary being pressed firmly against the wall by a large, scruffy, leather-clad man backed by three other men and a blonde woman. By _Derek Hale, surrounded by his pack._

"No." The word escaped before Hicks even had to think about it.

Derek could push him around--no, he could push _Stiles_ around--but he wasn't that guy anymore. Derek couldn't touch him anymore, and he definitely couldn't hurt Gary. Never Gary.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TBC
> 
> Just in case you only belong to one of the fandoms featured here, here's a pic to help you understand the resemblance http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mcx1hqFEMo1qgfdiso1_500.png
> 
> Also, I've decided that, for the purposes of this story, Cam's eyes are more hazel than they really are. Imagine Cam's blue with sort of a ring of Stiles's amber toward the outside of the iris.


	2. Reunion

"Calm down Erica!" Derek snapped as he lead his pack into the elevator on the first floor of the office building. The she-wolf had basically fidgeted the _whole way_ to the building, ever since they'd left their home in Beacon Hills to fly to New York. "Sorry, I'm just really excited to see Stiles," she explained. "It's like my skin is literally itching with anticipation."

Derek could understand the feeling. He missed Stiles terribly sometimes, and the prospect of seeing him again after so long was daunting. It had been almost 13 years since anyone in Beacon Hills had seen or heard from Stiles, but Derek could remember the day the seventeen year old left like it was yesterday.

"I know," he told Erica softly, by way of apology, as they ascended in the elevator. "We're all anxious to see him. My wolf still thinks of him as pack, even after all these years." Isaac, Scott, and Boyd all chorused their agreements.

The extremely slow elevator announced their arrival with a light *ding*, and the doors slid open to reveal a very normal, very empty lobby area. "Stiles is here?" Scott asked, looking puzzled. Erica said "Well he's obviously not _here_ , but I can smell him--or something really, really close to him--on the floor." 

The rest of the pack began to scent the air. She was right, of course. A distinctly Stiles-like smell was in the area; it made sense that his smell would become a little altered over the course of 13 years. As they were smelling the air to take stock of their surroundings, a tall but thin guy came around the corner muttering to himself and making odd hand gestures as he walked. He didn't even seem to have noticed the group of wolves already in the room.

"Hey, you," Erica said to the young man, trying to get his attention. He ignored her, so she tried again, saying "Hey, can you tell us where Stiles Stilinski is?"

When the guy continued to ignore her in favor of making more twitchy hand gestures, Derek huffed out an irritated breath and reached out to grab him by the collar of his blue t-shirt. He finally reacted as he was yanked by Derek and thrown into the nearest wall.

"Hey, don't touch me! Pushing is rude, and-and I have a badge!" The guy shouted at Derek, fumbling in his pocket and removing a flippy thing holding a government badge. His name was Gary Bell, but Derek could care could care less about the kid's name or rank. Gary continued to shove the badge in his face, yelling "I have a badge, you have to respect the badge!"

Derek growled "Where's Stiles?" while increasing pressure on Gary's chest with his forearm, but he got nothing from him other than a continued mantra of "Let go of me! Respect the badge!" Soon, Derek heard the sound of footsteps pounding toward them, and he was just preparing to release Gary when a deep voice ground out the word "No," and the scent that so closely matched Stiles's hit his nose. 

Derek turned his head toward the voice, somehow expecting to see a seventeen year old Stiles standing there just as familiar as the day he left. He did not expect to turn just in time to receive a very hard punch to the face.

The punch sent him flying into the corner. _Well, that can't be Stiles,_ he thought as his eyes tried to focus back up so that he could see who had hit him. He heard his pack begin to growl as his four betas formed a wall between him and whoever had punched him, but he also smelled confusion rolling off of them in waves.

When he opened his eyes and could focus again he understood why. The guy who'd hit him, who'd said no, was definitely Stiles. He had the same buzz cut hairdo, he had on the familiar combo of jeans and a plaid button-up pulled on over a plain t-shirt, and his eyes, though they were now an ice blue near the center, were ringed with the same warm cognac color on the outside...but he also looked distinctly different. He'd filled out his frame, his strong jaw had 5-o'clock shadow, and those eyes had hardened almost completely. They said nothing of pack.

Derek also noticed that he had ushered a complaining Gary behind him while Derek was counting stars, and that he had four people (not counting Gary) flanking him and looking prepared to fight. One of them, a neatly groomed woman in a button-up and pencil skirt, said "Hicks, they smell wrong. What are they?" What were _they_? How could she smell them that well? Derek could tell that none of them were werewolves. And what was a Hicks?

Stiles...Hicks (?) responded, saying "They're a different genetic hybrid than we are, Rache. Very different."

 _Different genetic hybrid? What are they?_ Scott voiced Derek's thought. "What are _you_?"

Stiles/Hicks stood a little straighter as he laughed and said "We're Alphas, Scott. All of us."


	3. Departure

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Flashback chapter, guys, and it's a long one :) Thanks again for all the positive feedback.

Hicks could still remember his last day in Beacon Hills, his last day as Stiles Stilinski, like it had been just the other day.

_It was the month of July, summer before Stiles's senior year, and he and Scott had just arrived at the high school for the morning lacrosse practice Finstock had called the day before. The two of them were almost late, and they got to the locker room just as the majority of the rest of the team was filing out on the way to the field, Danny pulling up the rear. The received a friendly nod from him as they passed._

_"So," Scott asked as he pulled on a white jersey with his number on the front and back, "are you feeling good about first string this year?" Stiles had finished Junior year off strong, and with a couple of spots opened up by the seniors recently graduated, he was confident he'd have a great season ahead of him. "Yeah," he responded with a smile, tugging on his own jersey. "This is going to be my year, I can feel it in my bones." Whether Scott believed that or not, Stiles couldn't really tell. Scott just seemed happy to be back in the locker room with his best friend. Normalcy and all that._

_They finished dressing and hurried out to the field, running into a couple of stragglers just arriving as they left. When they emerged beside the bleachers, Finstock immediately put Stiles on the spot, yelling "Bilinski! This just might be your lucky day, get out there and show me what you're made of!" Stiles ran out to the center of the field, familiar with this test. All he had to do was catch the ball, get past a couple of his teammates, then get the ball into the net. It would be hard, but he had faith he could get it done._

_Suddenly Isaac appeared a few yards to his right and tossed him the ball, starting the play. Stiles caught it in his crosse without thinking, his arms moving automatically. Then he ran. The two players standing between him and the goal looked excited for the inevitable takedown. As he approached the first guy--some mondo-sized sophomore--he spotted the minute muscle twitch that indicated he was prepared to run left, so he spun to the right causing the player to trip up and fall in his haste to switch sides. He heard a happy "Whoop!" from the sidelines and smiled knowing that it had come from either Scott or Isaac._

_Stiles continued to race down the field toward the second player, Greenberg. Greenberg ran forward to meet him, and without a thought, Stiles launched the ball from his stick high up into the air. As the other's eyes followed the ball, Stiles tried to run around his left side, but Greenberg caught on too quickly and dove to grab his ankle as he bolted past. Stiles embraced the fall letting his momentum carry him as he tucked into a ball and tumbled forward before popping back up and continuing to run, leaving Greenberg behind. He absently remembered the ball and held out his crosse just in time to have the ball plop down neatly into the net on the end. By that time, he was only yards away from the goal where Danny stood, eyes wide behind the goalkeeper's mask. Again, Stiles saw the tensing of muscles and was able to read them like he would one of his old supernatural tomes._

_He knew that Danny was expecting him to throw to the left, straight at the net. He threw left, but went for the corner of the goal. The ball bounced off of the edge, hit the side of Danny's helmet as he jumped, then ricocheted backward into the goal. It made a pleasant swoosh in the silence that had encompassed the field. No one moved or spoke for a long moment until Scott let out a yowl and ran out at him from the sidelines. Stiles suffered to be tackled to the ground, letting out a loud groan as he felt the addition of a second body, almost definitely Isaac's, to the puppy pile. "Dude!" Scott said loudly in Stiles's ear. "How did you do that?"_

_Stiles had no idea. "I just...ran. My body just kind of did the rest on its own." Isaac's head popped up over Scott's shoulder. "Did Derek turn you while we weren't looking? Because that wasn't normal." Stiles would have been offended if it weren't so true. Before he could respond, they were interrupted by a yelling Finstock ordering Stiles to do that again. Stiles didn't miss a single shot for the rest of practice, and he made quite a few trick shots that stumped the rest of the team._

_Scott raved about how "totally awesome!" Stiles had been all the way to his house. When he got out of Stiles's Jeep, he told him "You were great, buddy. This really is gonna be your year." The he'd loped up his front steps and into his house. That was the last time Stiles saw Scott before he left Beacon Hills._

* * *

  _When Stiles got home that day after practice, he immediately began to test his new coordination. He sat on the foot of his bed with a lacrosse ball and tried every trick shot he could think of :_  
Floor, desk, ceiling, hand  
Desk, bookshelf, closet door, hand  
Ceiling, headboard, wall, desk chair, hand...  
He went on like that for over an hour, never failing to catch the ball one-handed after three or four bounces.  


_Stiles pulled back to toss the ball one more time, but just as he released the throw, his cell phone began to vibrate on his bedside table, his father's ringtone cutting through the air. The distracting noise caused his aim to skew by a millimeter or two. It would have been no big deal if those millimeters hadn't caused the ball to fly out of the open window instead of bouncing off of the windowsill as it should have.  
_

_  
_That _would have been no big deal either if the sounds of screeching tires and breaking glass hadn't immediately followed._

_Instantly Stiles was up and at the window, looking down at the smoking carcass of an SUV wrapped around the telephone pole that stood between his house and that of the little old man next door. His shock only lasted for a second before the sound of a child's cry hit his ears.  
_

_He was out of the window and on the grass below in the blink of an eye. He didn't stop to think about how he'd done that, just thanked whoever was out there that he hadn't broken his neck. Stiles ran toward the small voice, and when he was finally upon the wreckage he could see the crumpled bodies of the couple who'd been driving the car. They were so bloody that Stiles could hardly tell, but they looked to be dead so he went back to his search for the child.  
_

_He found her sitting behind the telephone pole, curled around the body of a small dog. She was covered in blood, and she was bleeding herself from a gash above her left eye. Stiles kneeled beside her and asked "Are you alright, sweetheart?" She looked at him briefly before returning her gaze to the dog. "He's dead." she sniffled. "They hit him."  
_

_"Did you get hurt, too?" he asked, gently. "Do you feel any pain?" She must have been in shock because she looked confused for a second, then her eyes flew wide and she began to shout "Ow, my leg! It hurts!" over and over. Stiles hadn't heard any emergency vehicles yet, so he pulled the screaming girl away from her dead puppy and into his arms, intending to hop into his Jeep and drive her to the hospital himself to have her leg looked at; once he had a hold on her he could see that her leg was bleeding profusely. When he stood, he remembered that his keys were in the house on his bedside table--beside his cell phone. Fetching them would require too much time, so his body did the logical thing: it ran.  
_

_It ran hard and it ran fast, taking shortcuts that Stiles had mapped out for his packmates and never intended to use himself, and before he knew it he was in front of those sliding doors at the hospital, clutching the now-silent girl in his arms. He held her tighter as he stepped into the lobby and immediately attracted the attention of the young man behind the nurses' station with his fine coating of blood.  
_

_After that, everything was a flurry of doctors and nurses and deputies with questions; at some point his father had shown up and tried to speak with him, get him to wash the girl's blood off of his arms where it had become tacky on his skin, but Stiles couldn't handle communication until he heard that the girl would survive._ At least someone had to survive _._

_Eventually, after two long hours of waiting, a doctor came into the waiting room and informed Stiles, the gathered officers, and the girl's parents, who'd arrived not long after the sheriff, that she would live. They'd had to do major damage control on her leg--it had gotten clipped by the SUV just before it hit the puppy, but she would heal fully save for some scarring.  
_

_After the news of the girl's impending recovery, Stiles was prepared to leave, but he was stopped by the parents as he moved to go. He was expecting an admonishment or worse, but was surprised to receive a hug from both mother and father. The mother said "We heard from the officers that you ran our Elizabeth all the way here from the site of the accident. You saved her life, and we'll never forget that...You're a real hero." Stiles just nodded and tried not to show just how sick he felt that he'd_ caused _that accident. Then he began to walk, having assured his father that he would be fine without a ride in the sheriff's car._

_When he got home, the accident had been cleaned up and the bodies carted away to the morgue. All that remained was a little white lacrosse ball that Stiles picked up as he walked toward his house.  
_

_He went upstairs to his room and packed a couple of bags with enough clothes for two weeks, his laptop, his top three favorite books, and a photo of himself, Scott, and his dad from the previous year's thanksgiving at the McCall house. He penned a note to his father explaining that he couldn't handle being in Beacon Hills anymore, that he needed a break from the small town with the big death toll, and that he'd get in contact with him soon. He wrote 'I love you' three time in the hope that it would balance out the abandonment he had planned. He was out of the house within the hour.  
_

_His last stop on his way out of town was Derek's. They didn't have a long tearful goodbye. Stiles pulled out of the trees and up the drive to see Derek already standing on the porch having heard the Jeep from a mile away. Stiles got out and walked up to Derek where he stood, arms crossed, beside the doorway. When he got close enough, he planted a kiss on his lips. Derek seemed to kiss him back for a moment, but it wasn't long before Derek pushed him away with a growl. Stiles had been expecting that. He turned to leave with nothing but a muttered goodbye to the silent werewolf. Derek didn't say a word as Stiles walked to his car.  
_

_Stiles drove then, for days on end, until he found himself in the state of New York. He was a smart kid, he knew what a person had to do to disappear and reinvent himself; the first step was to get far enough that the missing persons posters couldn't follow you.  
_

_Stiles quickly rented a small apartment with the cash he'd pulled from his savings the day after he'd left and dropped his old identity, finding someone who could build him a new one. One week after the accident, Stiles ceased to be Stiles Stilinski and became Cameron Hicks, and 18 year old kid from a small town in Massachusetts. From that point on, he didn't look back.  
_


	4. Debriefing

Hicks felt an intense pang of amusement at the irony of standing there and telling a pack of werewolves that he and all of his teammates were Alphas. What would they think?

Identical looks of pure confusion passed over the faces of the pack members. They had all aged nicely, not much having changed since he had left. If anything, everyone had grown even more surreally attractive over time. Stiles hadn’t come into his own until he was in his senior year of high school, so he knew that his appearance must have been the most dramatically different.

Derek was the first to shake off his confusion. He said “You don’t smell like alphas,” and eyed Rachel suspiciously. “You don’t smell special at all.”

Rachel scoffed where she stood beside Hicks. “I’d rather smell like ‘nothing special’ than smell like I’d been rolling around in leaves recently like _some people_ ,” she said pointedly. Hicks chuckled and placed a hand on her shoulder. “We shouldn’t judge people for their leaf-rolling habits, Rache.”

“Can we judge them for their fashion sense, then?” Nina chipped in. “Because they look like they’re auditioning to play the Jets in a production of West Side Story with those matching leather jackets.”

Gary snickered as Derek began to argue--probably something about that being a total coincidence--before apparently thinking better of it. He just pinched the bridge of his nose and groaned “Look, Stiles, we didn’t come here to start trouble with your...whatever they are.”

“Then why are you here?” Bill asked, finally speaking. Hicks knew that even though Nina and Rachel had relaxed a bit when they saw that he knew the intruders, Bill and Kat would have remained on guard in case of some kind of treachery.

“We’re here to sell girl scout cookies,” Derek said flatly. The sarcasm Hicks remembers so well fell flat with Gary, who said “You’re the ugliest girl scouts I’ve ever seen. You should retire, ugly.” The entire team laughed, but Hicks could actually see the pack members’ hackles rising. This was about the time people started getting slammed into inanimate objects.

“Let me make something clear,” he said to Derek, eyes hardening, “I don’t really know why you’ve come here after all this time, but if you intend to spend any amount of time here not with your face underneath my boot, you should understand that Gary is off limits. You don’t even look at him funny. If you can’t keep your eyebrows under control, you can leave right now.”

Derek looked conflicted for a moment before releasing a huff of air from his nostrils and nodding, his eyebrows ascending to their usual height. “Good,” Hicks said, “now why are you here, really?”

Derek was about to answer when Erica rolled her eyes where she stood behind him and said “We’re here because we missed you, you idiot.” She then she surged forward to give Hicks a hug, surprizing him. He’d grown a bit taller since high school, so her arms wrapped tightly around his middle and her head rested just above his heart. She was probably listening to its beating just then.

As the knowledge that the pack had come just to see him sunk in, Hicks felt himself relax from a tension he hadn’t even known he’d been carrying in his chest. He realized that underneath his anger at finding them menacing Gary, he’d been afraid that everyone in Beacon Hills had finally found out what he’d done and the pack had come to drag him back to California...

But they’d just missed him.

As he pulled Erica tighter against him, he admitted to himself that he’d missed them, too.

“I hate to break this up,” Bill said,”but friends or not, they just walked into a government facility and threatened an agent. And, on top of that, Rachel thinks they smell funny. We gotta talk to Clay about this.”

Hicks pulled away from Erica to turn and look at Bill. “You’re right.” he said. As the anger and fear had drained out of him, he realized that he was happy to have the pack here. He wanted them to be able to stay, and that meant convincing the DOD that they were alright. “And in the meantime?”

“In the meantime, we should escort them to a holding cell so they can be out of the way until we’ve resolved this.”

“Holding cell? Hold on, there--” Derek began. Hicks cut him off with a pointed look that he hoped said ‘trust me, you’ll be fine.’ Jaw clenched Derek nodded in consent. None of the others protested.

Bill said “Good. Nina and I will take them down while you get in contact with Clay and Rosen. We’ll meet up in Rosen’s office in 15.” Hicks nodded and Bill turned and beckoned the pack with a hand. As he watched them follow Bill down the hall heading through the office, Hicks saw Bill unclip his radio from his belt. He heard him say “John? We’ve got 5 incoming--” before they were too far for him to hear anymore.

Hicks turned to his teammates where they stood behind him. Rachel looked unhappy as she checked Gary over for injuries; Hicks knew there would be a long bruise across Gary’s chest where Derek’s arm had been--he’d had bruises like that on his collarbone more times than he could count in his teenage years.

“What was that all about?” Kat asked, snapping him out of his memories. “They were really freaky.”

“Yeah, who are they, Cam?” Rachel pitched in. “And how do you know them?” Hicks sighed. “I’ll explain everything when we’re all here. For now, just call Rosen and tell him to get here. I’ll find Clay.” He didn’t wait for an answer before walking through the door leading to the stairwell and running down to the third floor.

* * *

 

“So let me get this straight,” Clay said to the group gathered in Dr. Rosen’s office. The dark man had listened quietly as Bill told everyone what had happened in the elevator lobby not even a half an hour earlier. “A biker gang came into your offices and accosted Gary because they wanted to have a family reunion with Cameron. And...they smell funny?” Nods from the group of Alphas. “...I don’t see why there needed to be a meeting about this, guys.”

“You don’t understand, Clay,” Rachel said, “They don’t just smell ‘funny’. They smell...unhuman.” The rest of the group didn’t have senses like Rachel’s, so it was hard for them to wrap their minds around people not smelling like people. Hicks knew better.

He finally spoke up in the silence following Rachel’s comment saying “I, uh...I think I should probably explain why that is, Rache.” Everyone looked at him expectantly. “I need to preface it with two things, though. One: They can probably hear everything we say in here, so try not to mention anything DOD sensitive. Two: This is going to sound really crazy, but then again what we are isn’t so believable either.”

He paused for effect. “We will all keep that in mind, Cameron,” Dr. Rosen said, speaking for the first time since they’d gathered in his office. “Now, please do continue.”

Hicks cleared his throat. “Well...they’re werewolves.” There had been a time in Hicks’s life where he thought he’d never open his mouth to tell anyone about the existence of werewolves. Aside from his father, all of the best people in his life had been the members of his pack, and telling their secret would have felt like the ultimate betrayal for Stiles. Hicks, though? There was no one he trusted more than the people on his team, and he couldn’t keep a secret that huge from them with it right under their noses. Rachel’s nose, as the case may be.

“What do you mean, ‘they’re werewolves’?” Nina asked.

“I mean, they have fangs and claws and a strange affinity for the moon.”

The looks Hicks got were skeptical, but he knew that his team trusted him; they’d try as hard as they could to believe him at his word. Rosen rubbed his chin and asked “And how do you know these werewolves?”

“Yeah,” Nina said, then added “And why do they keep calling you Stiles?”

Hicks released an anxious breath. This would be the first time he’d spoken about his life as Stiles since he’d run from Beacon Hills all those years ago. “Well, my name used to _be_ Stiles. Stiles Stilinski.” He paused for the inevitable “Who’d name their kid Stiles Stilinski?!” which was provided by Kat. “That wasn’t my given name, but I couldn’t pronounce it as a kid, so I just went by Stiles. It used to fit me...My records say I’m from Norwell, Massachusetts, but I was actually born and raised in a town in California called Beacon Hills, where my dad was--and probably still is--the sheriff. When I was 16, my best friend was bitten by a werewolf and turned...it was my fault. He, and by extension I, joined the local wolf pack. Then, just before my 18th birthday, my ability kicked in and I caused an accident while I was first getting used to it...It was my first time killing a human being, and after that I couldn’t stay there, so I moved to New York and became the Cameron Hicks you know and love. The ‘biker gang’ who showed up here today are most of the members of the pack that I left.”

Hicks stood with his hands in the pockets of his jeans, waiting to be called insane by his closest friends. “Sooo,” Bill said, “you were a member of a wolf pack.” He shrugged his shoulders. “I’ve heard crazier things.”

“I think it’s awesome,” Kat piped, followed by Nina’s smooth “I always thought you seemed like a Cali boy,” and Gary’s chuckled “Hicks, you ran with wolves. That’s bad-ass.”

“Gary, don’t use such language,” gasped Rachel. She looked at hicks. “I guess that explains the smell,” she said, wrinkling her nose, then breaking into a grin.

To say Hicks was relieved would be an understatement. He felt like he’d just dodged the hugest bullet in existence, such was his relief that he’d neither been shunned nor institutionalized. No one had even dwelled on the part of his story where he’d killed people. He was sure they were curious but they would give him time to decide if he wanted to talk about it. They knew him so well.

As Hicks released a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding, Clay cleared his throat. “I hate to be the one to bring this up, but don’t you think it’s a bit unorthodox for the DOD to be holding a pack of werewolves in one of its facilities? We need to know if they’re a threat and why they’re here.”

“Clay, they’re not--they aren’t a threat to _us_.”

“Speak for yourself Hicks, they shoved me into a wall,” Gary pointed out, clutching his chest. “And that hurt.”

“I know, Gary,” Hicks told the younger man guiltily, “But they’ll never touch you again. I promise, they’re not a threat. They just came to find me.”

Dr. Rosen said “I know this must be an important moment for you, Cameron, but I worry that if you get too involved with this pack you will become distracted. You’re essential to our fight. Defeating Stanton Parish is too important for us to lose you to your past again.”

“Dr. Rosen, I swear I am committed to this fight. Parish killed Dani, and I’ll never forget that, never stop wanting him to pay, but I don’t think that ignoring my past will do any good this time.

“Yes, well I’m trusting your judgement on this." He made a run-along gesture in the direction of the doorway. "Go get your friends.”

Hicks’s eyebrows shot up. “You want me to bring them in here?”

“Perhaps the briefing room would be better,” Rosen mused, “Regardless, if they came all the way from California to see you, they must be intending to stay a while. Introductions must be made.”

“We can’t just have strangers with claws roaming around the office, Lee,” Clay pointed out.

Dr. Rosen smiled. “Well, after we’ve been introduced, they won’t be strangers anymore.” He looked again to Hicks and said “Let’s meet our guests.”


End file.
